Besides considering the Chargers legitimate contenders after defending their home turf (I'll still see how they do on the mean fields in Pittsburgh), the game opened up a whole other set of issues which become Baseball related.
First and foremost, since his Super Bowl ring and MVP, Peyton Manning has been ousted in the first round two more times. Before his ring, he failed to get past the division round in his career, despite always having great receivers and a highly competitive team. I engaged into a debate with one of my Sox fan friends (who also happens to be a Patriots fan) and we discussed "choking."
If you are labeled a "choker" (Peyton Manning, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez) and then you win a championship and play a vital role (Manning's Super Bowl MVP, Clemens' two rings with the Yankees, A-Rod if he wins a World Series and does well) how long is the statute of limitations? If Peyton Manning chokes the next two years, how does he get a free pass with his one championship? Clearly this has to be broken down into some sort of chance and success ratio. For instance, if Alex Rodriguez never leaves Seattle, or becomes injured after game 3 of the 2004 ALCS with the Yankees, and then gets traded and never plays in the postseason, he is all of a sudden a pretty solid playoff performer.
He also would have had four less opportunities to choke, which in this case, he took full advantage of by being terrible in his next 17 games. Now if A-Rod wins either an ALCS or World Series MVP and the Yankees get a ring during his tenure here, is he still a choker? What if he does it next year and then the Yankees go another eight years without winning and he does terrible in all of the postseasons they reach? Why hasn't there been an official "choke" stat?
When you get down to it, considering someone a "choker" is stupid to begin with because it can change so easily. Not to mention, in baseball, it can change in a single moment. Josh Beckett is considered the complete opposite of a choker in big games, but injured or not he was God awful in the postseason in 2008, now nobody is going to label him a choker, but it's a clear example of how having "clutch" players doesn't always matter. Jon Lester was terrific in all of his starts except one last year in the playoffs, but his one loss was probably the most important game of the entire postseason for the Red Sox. He ended up losing game 7 to a better starter, and he lost a pivotal game three which turned the entire series around with Tampa making a statement against the Red Sox at Fenway.
So now does anybody out there have their own formula? I myself still haven't reached a conclusion, but we both decided if Peyton Manning continues to choke away games, his choker label gets "restored" and we also decided if Alex Rodriguez were to leave the Yankees and do well in the playoffs, it's an atmosphere thing and not a pressure thing. Of course, best case for him would be getting it done in a big way in the Bronx and shaking the label forever, which I believe in his case, playing in a more individual sport, would be enough.
The game also made me hate Philip Rivers. What a punk. I'll be rooting whole-heartedly for James Farrior to crush his southern, sharp-tongued body to the cold tundra in Pittsburgh.
The final revelation was in regards to NFL overtime. I know there are NFL purists just like MLB ones, but this overtime system makes no sense whatsoever. When you play to a tie after 60 minutes, the mindset right now among NFL "experts" is that you should have taken care of the other team in regulation and then you have an opportunity to "stop" the other team if you lose the 50-50 coin toss.
My response is, why? Why should one team have to face that challenge by losing to an arbitrary coin? Didn't both teams, regardless of how the game worked out, deserve to be in that situation? Shouldn't they both have a chance to score on the other team's defense? Why is only one defense being placed into the gauntlet? Sure they can succeed and have great field positioning and then that will benefit the offense and then the offense can score and they will have truly "earned" their win, or whatever that means, but look at the stats. Last I checked something ridiculous like 80 percent of teams that started with the ball in overtime won their games. How is that fair? Clearly a defense is pretty exhausted after regulation, so both defenses should have to defend just like in college.
The one thing I would change is where an offense starts, I do believe the NFL overtime shouldn't be sudden death, especially since it isn't in: soccer (shootouts after two halfs), basketball (an extra period), hockey (five minutes of sudden death but then shootouts which last three rounds and then become like baseball and partial sudden death), baseball (home team gets last licks regardless), or any other major sport. In football, most of all, I think it makes the most sense to give the other team a chance.
So naturally it should be something like college, but in college they start at the opponents' 30 yard line, which would be too easy in the NFL. Therefore, if I had to recreate an overtime system in professional football, I'd make it full posessions where anything can happen. Kick it off, make a drive, the whole nine yards. Once a team scores a higher amount of points than the other in a drive, the game is over. Both teams had a chance, with equal ability to win, and you truly tested all facets of the team, just like in regulation. This also would eliminate the dreaded "tie" opportunity where Donovan McNabb gets confused.
Finally, congratulations to the New York Knicks! They won their version of the NBA championship (at least until 2010) by making a notch in the Celtics' "loser" bed post with a win at the Garden against the defending champs and major powerhouse last night. In my lifetime, there has been little to truly root for with the Knicks. We got stuck with the Miller Pacers, The Jordan Bulls and the Mourning Heat before the championship for most of the years of my Knicks-fan-competitive-team-watching lifetime. Both times New York managed to beat all of those teams, they lost the championship to the Olajuwon Rockets and the Duncan/Robinson Spurs (by the way, was calling them the "Twin Towers" in the 1999 championship a bad, bad, omen?) So honestly, unlike any of my other professional sports teams, the Knicks have let me down every single time.
As a result of such abuse, I'm stuck remembering extremely random games where I truly felt fulfilled. Last night's 100-88 victory was one of those times. While Reggie was having "Miller Time" and Jordan was dropping 55 at the Garden, or now the Knicks are mediocre and LeBron, Wade and Garnett led teams are dominating in the conference, I'm thinking about a random 104-72 beating on the Bulls somewhere around 15 years ago. So this, probably the only time in the next two years I'll speak of such things, is where I congratulate the Knicks on their victory.
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